Friday, August 24, 2007 NBI files rap v. vice control cop
THE National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) yesterday filed criminal and administrative charges against a policeman arrested in an entrapment inside the Cebu City Office headquarters Wednesday afternoon.
SPO1 Jaime Otadoy was charged with extortion, simple robbery, violations of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act and violations of the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards against Public Officials.
The same set of charges was filed against Otadoy’s two alleged accomplices, PO1 Raniel Capangpangan and PO3 Rey Albotra, whom the NBI failed to take into custody during the entrapment.
The charges were raffled off to Graft Investigator Vicente Roble for inquest investigation but the proceedings were not concluded because they ran out of time.
The former chief of the disbanded Vice Control Section (VCS), meanwhile, is facing an administrative investigation over allegations he knew of the extortion.
Disbanded
Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Bureau Chief George Ylanan, in an interview with reporters yesterday, said that former VCS Chief Wilbert Parilla is also being investigated for alleged mismanagement of his section.
Ylanan said that Insp. Aileen Recla, CIIB investigation section chief, has been ordered to investigate Parilla.
Acting Cebu City Police Office (CCPO) Director Patrocinio Comendador has placed Parilla under floating status and disbanded the VCS right after the NBI operation.
Ylanan said that although he was ordered by Comendador to absorb all the 15 personnel from VCS, he decided to pick only some of them. The others, especially the investigators, will be assigned to the other special units and police stations.
Parilla, in an interview with Sun.Star Superbalita, denied knowing anything about the alleged extortion.
Parilla particularly commented on Lerio’s allegation that Capangpangan told him that they have already arrested the man he tasked to arrest.
“Niingon ba diay kog kamo nay bahala pagpangwarta diha? Niingon ko kamo nay bahala kay kahibawo na sila unsay angay nga buhaton,” Parilla said. (I told them it was up to them because they know what they were supposed to do.)
Parilla confirmed that his men took custody of Lerio last Tuesday but only to get information from him and not to extort money.
Message
Parilla, however, said he failed to personally supervise the getting of information from Lerio because he was in a hurry to go home as he had a fever.
Parilla insisted there was no entrapment. He said money was not handed over to the three VCS operatives.
CCPO Deputy Director for Operations Pablo Labra II, in a separate interview, said the incident involving the VCS operatives served as a message for other policemen to do their job honestly.
“Personally, I want to take this positively. This should serve as a lesson for rogue policemen to stop their illegal activities,” Labra said.
Cebu City policeman Adonis Dumpit, who has himself been indicted before the anti-graft office for murder, stepped up to defend his beleaguered colleagues.
Dumpit, together with PO2 Milo Arreola, executed an affidavit that Otadoy’s lawyer, Pedro Leslie Salva, submitted during the inquest investigation.
The two policemen said in the affidavit that there was no entrapment and that Otadoy was simply taken into custody right after NBI agents, together with plainclothes policemen from the Regional Intelligence and Investigation Division (RIID), came into the Vice Control Section headquarters.
‘Fabricated’
Dumpit and Arreola said they were inside the Vice Control Section talking with Otadoy regarding the upcoming Annual General Inspection at the camp when the NBI and RIID agents arrived.
“We believe that the RIID and the NBI personnel were misguided by the alleged complainant. The story made by the complainant is fabricated and untruthful. (He) made that declaration to destroy the image of the PNP,” they said.
Salva also presented a warrant of arrest for a non-bailable drug case against the wife of complainant Reuel Lerio.
Sources within the bureau are worried that Dumpit’s presence, as well as the presentation of the warrant of arrest, are part of a calculated ruse to scare the complainant into taking back the affidavit-complaint that became the basis for the entrapment.
NBI 7 Chief Medardo de Lemos refused to comment, saying they will leave the outcome of the inquest investigation to the assigned graft investigator.
“It’s a continuing crime. He (Otadoy) already received the P200,000 payoff the night before. What was delivered last Wednesday was only the balance,” he said.
Lerio, 39, filed the complaint that resulted in the entrapment early Wednesday afternoon.
Released
In his affidavit, he said that Capangpangan and Albotra approached him around 4 p.m. last Tuesday while he was at the Cebu Cathedral parking lot waiting for his son. The two refused to let him leave until Otadoy, whom they called by mobile phone, arrived.
Otadoy, in turn, showed him a pack of what appeared to be shabu and told him that they would use the drugs as evidence unless he gives in to their demand.
Lerio said the policemen then took him, with his son, to a vacant lot at the Cebu Business Park behind the CCPO compound, where they waited for the end of office hours, and then into the Vice Control Section office around 5 p.m. It was here that they asked him for P2 million.
He pleaded with the policemen and told them that he did not have that much cash. The policemen later agreed to P1.2 million.
Lerio said he called his wife and asked her to get ready the P200,000 he got from the sale of his car three days earlier. The money was brought to the VCS office by his nephew.
Lerio said he was released on condition that he comes up with the balance the following day. (KNR/JST/with CPL of Superbalita)
